Final general statement of account (DGD): the act that closes the project owner's account

A project owner (maître d'ouvrage) that notifies a general statement of account while omitting the late-completion penalties loses those penalties. Permanently. The same reasoning applies to price reductions not applied, sums advanced to a subcontractor, and the cost of remedial works not allocated: once the statement of account has become final, the claim is extinguished, not because it was unfounded, but because the contract account is closed. Symmetrically, a contractor that lets the CCAG time limits (the French General Administrative Terms for works contracts) run without submitting a statement of claim loses its claims for additional works, whatever their technical reality. This guide treats the final general statement of account as an act of foreclosure (forclusion): what it contains, what it extinguishes, and the timetable of strict deadlines leading to its formation, including by default.

What the final general statement of account settles, and what it does not

The final general statement of account (décompte général définitif, DGD) is the closing of the account of the works contract. It sets out all the sums due in respect of performance, monthly interim payments included, and produces a balance, positive or negative. Its practical interest lies less in its accounting function than in its legal effect: once it has become final, it binds the parties in an unalterable manner. No claim arising from the performance of the contract may any longer be asserted by either side if it does not appear in it.

The contract account, not ten-year liability

The scope of the DGD stops at the financial relations arising from the contract. The administrative case law has long accepted that the final character of the statement of account does not deprive the project owner of the benefit of the statutory guarantees that follow acceptance: the guarantee of perfect completion (garantie de parfait achèvement), the two-year guarantee of satisfactory operation (garantie biennale de bon fonctionnement) and the ten-year guarantee (garantie décennale). These actions have a legal basis distinct from the settlement of the account and survive its closing. The respective scope of these three guarantees, according to the nature of the defect, is set out in our article ten-year, two-year or perfect completion.

The distinction is operative for an investor accepting a major refurbishment. A defect affecting the structural soundness of the works, revealed eighteen months after acceptance, remains covered. By contrast, an additional cost of corrective works incurred before the general statement of account was notified and not entered in the account is lost. Likewise, the claim for late-completion penalties, which is a contractual claim in the settlement of the contract, is extinguished with the statement of account.

Public contracts and private contracts: two regimes of finality

The effect of finality does not have the same source depending on the regime of the contract.

In a public contract, it results from the general administrative terms applicable to public works contracts, in the version resulting from the Order of 30 March 2021 (CCAG Travaux 2021, published in the Official Gazette (Journal officiel) of 1 April 2021) or, for older contracts or those which still refer to it, from the Order of 8 September 2009. The CCAG does not apply automatically: it is binding only if the contract refers to it, and the special administrative terms (CCAP) may derogate from it, provided that the derogations are summarised in the last article of the CCAP. The first reflex, in any public-contract DGD file, is therefore to identify the version of the CCAG referred to and the list of derogations.

In a private contract, no text imposes a final statement of account mechanism. The NF P03-001 standard, in its December 2017 version, provides a comparable mechanism, a final statement by the contractor followed by a final statement of account by the project owner, but it has contractual value only if the contract expressly refers to it. In the absence of a stipulation, the settlement of the account falls under the general law: the claim for the balance is subject to a five-year limitation period under Article 2224 of the French Civil Code and Article L. 110-4 of the French Commercial Code, and unreserved acceptance of a statement of account is analysed as a question of evidence and waiver, not as an automatic foreclosure.

The chain of statements: content of each document

The DGD is not a single document but the end of a sequence of three acts, each with its own author and content. Confusion between these documents is the source of a significant share of the disputes.

The draft final statement. Prepared by the contractor after completion of the works, it sets out the total amount of the sums to which the contractor considers it is entitled as a result of the performance of the contract as a whole: works under the base contract, additional works ordered, price updates and revisions, compensation, bonuses and retentions. This final works statement is prepared before deduction of interim payments already made: it reflects the total amount of the contract as performed, not the balance.

The final statement. The works supervisor (maître d'œuvre) checks the draft, accepts or corrects it, and prepares the final statement. It transmits it to the project owner together with the draft general statement of account.

The general statement of account. The project owner prepares it and notifies it to the contractor. Within the meaning of Article 12.3 of the CCAG Travaux 2021, it comprises the final statement, the statement of the balance drawn up from the final statement and the last monthly statement, and the summary of the monthly interim payments and of the balance. The difference between this amount and the sum of the payments already made constitutes the balance to be paid or repaid.

There is no single regulatory template for a general statement of account. Public project owners generally work from form EXE10 (general statement of account for a public works contract) and its annexes EXE11 to EXE13, made available by the legal affairs directorate of the economic and financial ministries. These forms are not mandatory, but they have the advantage of structuring the headings whose omission is fatal: penalties, retention money, repayment of the advance, direct payments to subcontractors, late-payment interest.

The timetable of foreclosures, deadline by deadline

The chronology of the settlement of the account is a succession of strict time limits. Each step purges the previous one.

• Acceptance of the works. Notification of the acceptance decision is the starting point of the process. Until it has taken place, the final statement mechanism is not triggered.
• Draft final statement by the contractor. The CCAG Travaux 2021 (Article 12.2) provides for a period of thirty days from notification of the acceptance decision, where the CCAG 2009 (Article 13.3.2) provided for forty-five days. After that period and after a formal notice has remained without effect, the works supervisor may prepare the final statement of its own motion at the contractor's expense. That statement prepared of the supervisor's own motion is deemed accepted by the contractor.
• Notification of the general statement of account by the project owner. Thirty days running from the later of two dates: delivery of the draft final statement, or publication of the reference index allowing the balance to be revised.
• Return of the signed general statement of account by the contractor. Thirty days from notification. Silence amounts to acceptance: the general statement of account then becomes final. Signature without reservation has the same effect, immediately.
• Statement of claim. If the contractor signs subject to reservations, it must give reasons for and quantify its challenge in a statement of claim (mémoire en réclamation) sent within the thirty-day period provided for in Article 50.1.1 of the CCAG Travaux.
• Project owner's decision on the claim. Thirty days to notify its position; silence at the end of that period amounts to rejection.
• Referral to the court. The CCAG Travaux confines the bringing of a contentious claim to a period of six months from notification of the rejection decision or from expiry of the period amounting to rejection (Article 50.3.2). That period is a foreclosure period: its expiry renders the claim inadmissible, whatever the merits of the claim.

These periods must be systematically checked against the CCAP, which may derogate from them, and against the version of the CCAG referred to in the contract. A timetable built on the CCAG 2021 and applied to a contract governed by the CCAG 2009 produces date errors of several weeks.

The tacit final general statement of account: the foreclosure that operates against the project owner

The mechanism most feared by public project owners is the tacit DGD, introduced into the CCAG 2009 by the Order of 3 March 2014 and carried over in Article 12.4 of the CCAG Travaux 2021. Where the project owner has not notified the general statement of account within the thirty-day period, the contractor may notify it, with a copy to the works supervisor, a signed draft general statement of account. If the project owner fails to notify the general statement of account within ten days, the draft general statement of account sent by the contractor becomes the final general statement of account.

The design of the mechanism is brutal and deliberately dissuasive. The document that binds the project owner is the one the contractor drafted, with the additional works it entered in it, without the late-completion penalties which it naturally refrained from entering. Ten days of silence are enough. A procurement department that receives a registered letter entitled "draft general statement of account" must treat it as an act triggering foreclosure, not as a payment reminder.

Three reflexes are required on the project owner's side: record the date of receipt of any draft general statement of account, check that the formal notice and the computation of time limits are documented, and notify within the period a general statement of account, even one provisionally unfavourable to the contractor, rather than let silence produce its effects.

Finality: what the project owner loses by notifying an incomplete statement of account

The most costly error is not procedural, it is substantive. It consists in notifying a general statement of account that is accurate as to the quantities executed but incomplete as to the project owner's claims.

Once the statement of account is final, the following claims are lost if they do not appear in it:

• late-completion penalties, including where the delay has been established and quantified by the works supervisor in an earlier report;
• penalties for absence from site meetings, or for delay in delivering execution documents or the file of works as executed;
• price reductions (réfactions) for accepted non-conformity;
• the cost of works carried out of the project owner's own motion or in direct management at the contractor's expense;
• sums corresponding to damage caused to existing structures or to third parties and re-invoiced;
• claims for repayment of an advance not yet cleared.

There is no later catching-up. Nor can the project owner subsequently set off against the retention money, since the fate of the latter is itself settled by the statement of account. The only exception traditionally admitted is fraud or wilful deceit, which require proof of a deliberate manoeuvre and not of a mere calculation error.

An organisational consequence must be drawn from this. Notification of the general statement of account is not an accounting formality delegated to the works supervisor: it is a financial decision that must be prepared as such, with adversarial escalation of penalties, reservations not cleared and direct payments. In complex operations, the preparation of the general statement of account deserves a second-level review, distinct from the one that validated the monthly statements.

On the contractor's side: signature without reservation amounts to waiver

The symmetry is perfect. A contractor that signs without reservation waives its claims for additional works, and its claims for damages for extension of time, unforeseen constraints or disruption of the economics of the contract. Equipment standing costs borne during a work stoppage attributable to the project owner, if they are not entered in the statement of account or reserved, are no longer admissible.

Prudence therefore dictates signing with quantified reservations, even where the final quantification has not been settled, and then sending the statement of claim within the period. A general unquantified reservation, of the type "subject to our future claims", runs the risk of being held ineffective.

The statement of claim: form, content, time limits

The statement of claim is not a letter of challenge. It is the act that joins the dispute and conditions the admissibility of the later action before the administrative court. Its regime is set out in Article 50 of the CCAG Travaux.

Three cumulative requirements condition its validity. It must set out the grounds of the dispute, in fact and in law, and not merely announce a disagreement. It must state the amount of the sums claimed, item by item. It must provide the necessary supporting evidence, the detail of the calculation and the corresponding documents. A statement that merely gives a lump sum without breakdown is open to an objection of inadmissibility.

Three practical consequences follow.

First, the scope of the statement fixes the scope of the proceedings. A new claim, not presented in the statement of claim, is in principle inadmissible before the court, unless it arises from a later fact. It is therefore preferable to enter all heads of claim, including those whose quantification remains provisional.

Second, the statement must be addressed to the addressee designated by the applicable CCAG, with a copy to the works supervisor where the latter is named. Sending it only to the works supervisor under a mechanism that designates the project owner exposes the contractor to a debate on the validity of the referral.

Third, implied rejection starts the six-month period for referral to the court. That period is the real cut-off of the mechanism. Amicable negotiations begun after the rejection do not interrupt it, unless an advisory committee for the amicable settlement of disputes is seized or an amicable procedure expressly provided for by the CCAG is implemented, the suspensive effect of which must be checked case by case.

Payment of the balance, retention money and late-payment interest

The DGD determines the balance, but it also triggers a payment timetable backed by sanctions.

In public contracts, the overall payment period is fixed by Articles R. 2192-10 et seq. of the French Public Procurement Code: thirty days for the State, local authorities and their public establishments, fifty days for public health establishments and the armed forces health services, sixty days for public undertakings. Exceeding it automatically triggers late-payment interest at the interest rate applied by the European Central Bank to its main refinancing operations plus eight percentage points, together with a fixed recovery cost allowance of forty euros, to which supplementary compensation may be added on production of supporting documents.

Retention money, capped at five per cent of the amount of the works by Law No. 71-584 of 16 July 1971, is released on expiry of the period of the guarantee of perfect completion, unless the project owner raises a reasoned objection. It may be replaced by a first-demand guarantee or, with the parties' agreement, by a joint and several personal guarantee. Its fate must appear explicitly in the general statement of account. The use of this retention to obtain the clearing of reservations, and its fate if the contractor fails, are analysed in our article on retention money.

In private contracts, the contractor also has the payment guarantee of Article 1799-1 of the French Civil Code, which allows it, in the absence of a joint and several guarantee provided by a private project owner for works exceeding the regulatory threshold, to suspend performance after a formal notice. This lever combines usefully with a challenge to the statement of account where the project owner's solvency deteriorates.

Private contracts: contractual freedom and its blind spots

In a private works contract, the finality of the statement of account exists only if the contract provides for it. Two configurations are encountered.

Where the contract refers to the NF P03-001 standard, it borrows a mechanism close to that of the CCAG: a final statement by the contractor after acceptance, checking by the works supervisor, notification of the final statement of account by the project owner, express or tacit acceptance on expiry of the contractual period. The standard's time limits differ from those of the CCAG and must be read in the version referred to in the contract.

Where the contract refers to no general document, acceptance of a statement of account is analysed under the general law of obligations. It may amount to an acknowledgment of debt, or even a settlement agreement (transaction) within the meaning of Article 2044 of the French Civil Code if it involves reciprocal concessions and ends an existing dispute. But it does not, of itself, extinguish claims not mentioned. For an investor project owner, this flexibility cuts both ways: it avoids automatic foreclosure, but it leaves the account open and exposes the owner to late claims throughout the five-year limitation period.

Drafting the contract is therefore the real moment of trade-off. Inserting a final statement of account clause with an express extinguishing effect secures the financial closing of the operation, which matters where the asset is to be sold or refinanced after delivery. The absence of a clause leaves a latent liability that any diligent buyer will bring out in an audit.

Conclusion: treat the general statement of account as an act of foreclosure, not as an invoice

The final general statement of account is one of the few acts in construction law that extinguishes claims by the mere passage of short time limits. Ten days of silence are enough to give rise to a tacit DGD drafted by the contractor. Thirty days are enough to lose late-completion penalties that were nevertheless due. Six months are enough to render inadmissible a claim that is perfectly well founded on the merits.

The position taken is clear: the closing of the account must be prepared before acceptance, not after. As soon as the acceptance decision is notified, the project owner must have a settled statement of its own claims: penalties quantified, reservations not cleared valued, direct payments listed, advance cleared. The contractor, for its part, must have consolidated its claims for additional works and its claims for damages before sending its draft final works statement. The effects attached to this acceptance decision, in particular on the allocation of risk, are dealt with separately in our article on acceptance of works.

Before any signature or notification, have three points checked by a person independent of the project team: the version of the CCAG and the derogations in the CCAP, the exact computation of each time limit from the date of notification of acceptance, and the completeness of the claims entered in the statement of account. This check, which takes a few hours, is the only moment at which the sums at stake remain recoverable.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between the final statement and the final general statement of account? The final statement sets out the total amount of the sums to which the contractor is entitled in respect of performance of the contract, before deduction of interim payments already made. It is prepared by the works supervisor from the draft final statement sent by the contractor. The general statement of account, prepared and notified by the project owner, comprises that final statement, the statement of the balance and the summary of the monthly interim payments and of the balance. It becomes final only after express or tacit acceptance by the contractor, and it is only at that point that it acquires its effect of finality.

Can the project owner still claim late-completion penalties after the DGD? No, if the penalties were not entered in the general statement of account. Late-completion penalties are claims arising from the performance of the contract: they fall within the scope of the settlement of the account and are extinguished with it. The omission cannot be remedied, including where the delay is technically established by the site meeting minutes. Only fraud or wilful deceit, the proof of which is demanding, would allow the statement of account to be challenged.

How long does the project owner have to notify the general statement of account? Thirty days, running from the later of two dates: delivery of the draft final statement by the contractor, or publication of the reference index allowing the balance to be revised. After that period, the contractor may notify its own signed draft general statement of account; the project owner then has ten days to notify the general statement of account, failing which the contractor's document becomes the final general statement of account. These periods are those of the CCAG Travaux and may be adjusted by the CCAP.

Can a tacit DGD arise against a local authority? Yes. The mechanism of Article 12.4 of the CCAG Travaux 2021, which for the CCAG 2009 resulted from the Order of 3 March 2014, applies to any project owner subject to the CCAG, including a local authority. The document that then binds is the one drafted by the contractor, without the penalties that it will not have entered. The only defence is organisational: treat receipt of any draft general statement of account as an act triggering a ten-day period.

What must a statement of claim contain to be admissible? It must set out the grounds of the dispute in fact and in law, state the amount of the sums claimed item by item, and provide the corresponding supporting evidence and detail of the calculation. A statement limited to a lump sum without breakdown, or to a challenge in principle, is liable to be rejected. Its content determines the scope of the later court action: a claim not presented at the statement stage is in principle inadmissible before the court.

Does the final general statement of account prevent a ten-year guarantee claim? No. The finality of the statement of account concerns only claims forming part of the financial settlement of the contract. The statutory guarantees that follow acceptance, the guarantee of perfect completion, the two-year guarantee of satisfactory operation and the ten-year guarantee, rest on a distinct legal basis and survive the closing of the account. By contrast, additional costs already incurred before notification of the statement of account and not entered in the account are lost.

Is there a mandatory template for the general statement of account? No template is imposed by the texts. Public purchasers commonly use form EXE10 and its annexes, made available by the legal affairs directorate of the economic and financial ministries, which structure the headings whose omission is penalised: penalties, price reductions, retention money, repayment of the advance, direct payments to subcontractors and late-payment interest. In private contracts, the content depends on the contract and, where applicable, on the NF P03-001 standard where it is contractually referred to.